The Complete Lost Children Series

by Krista Street

  I almost hugged her, but then realized I’d probably fall off Coal so settled for grinning happily.

  “Lena!” Flint’s voice called in the distance. A figure galloped toward us from across the snow ridden field. “There you are!” he called when he got closer.

  The rest of the group huddled together at the edge of the herd, about a hundred yards away.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded. He stopped his huffing mount inches from mine. His eyes were dark and wild. I wondered how long they’d been waiting.

  “Searching for cows.” I knew now was not the time to bring up the cabin, or the papers . . . or the basement. I gave Amber a hard look so she’d keep her mouth shut.

  Flint glanced toward the forest we’d emerged from. “Did you come out of there?” His eyes grew even crazier. “Lena, do you know what that is?”

  I shook my head. From Amber’s frightened expression, I guessed she didn’t either.

  “Those are the Forbidden Hills! Are you crazy? What made you go in there?” Flint cried.

  I eyed Amber. “I don’t know, but we’re fine. We made it out.”

  Flint took his hat off and raked a hand through his hair. “Come on. We need to get down. The snow’s coming in too fast.”

  Guilt followed me down the mountain. The panic in Flint’s gaze, and the way he stayed close to my side for the entire ride back, told me he’d been more than worried. He still seemed panicked, even though I rode beside him.

  Of course, I didn’t tell him that his worry was valid. If Amber hadn’t been able to sniff our way out of the Forbidden Hills, we’d no doubt still be there, maybe forever. I shuddered.

  The wind howled around us. The sky was darker than midnight. “Let’s get the horses cleaned off. When you’re done, go to the main house,” Tyler instructed as the barn’s lights came into view.

  “So much for no snow,” Dean said with a forced smile. I knew he’d been worried too. When he’d seen me and Amber ride up with Flint, a look of huge relief had crossed his face.

  I slid off Coal. The papers in my pocket crinkled. I stuffed them deeper into my jeans. “We better get these horses unsaddled.”

  Everyone groomed and blanketed their horses before putting them into stalls. One of the cowboys mixed together hot bran mash which each horse readily inhaled.

  My feet sank into the snow with each step back to the house. Flint kept his hand firmly locked around mine the entire way. At the main house, Val had hot cocoa, coffee, tea and cinnamon rolls waiting. From the other smells coming from the kitchen, I guessed there’d be a huge feast for supper.

  “You all took your time,” Jacinda commented when I walked into the large living room. She sipped a cup of tea while lounging on one of the huge sofas. Di sat across from her, reading a book. Haley sat on the end chair, reading an issue of Vogue.

  “How’d it go?” Di asked.

  “We got all of them,” I said, referring to the cattle. I hung my wet jacket beside the roaring fire. The heat coming off it felt so good. I held up my cool fingertips.

  “Where are the guys?” Jacinda asked.

  “In the mudroom.”

  The guys and Mica were still discussing the cattle with Pete, and Amber was in the kitchen chatting nervously to Val and her other daughters.

  I eyed Haley. When she caught me watching her, she smiled. I forced a smile back before I caught Di and Jacinda’s attention. I nodded stiffly to the door. I need to talk to you, I mouthed.

  Di frowned and stood. So did Jacinda. They followed me into the hall. No one was around.

  “We need to have a meeting, now,” I said in hushed tones.

  “Why?” Di asked.

  “We just do. Can you gather everyone?”

  “Yes.” She spun on her heel and disappeared.

  Jacinda and I hurried back to our cabin, the wind biting into us. Everyone else followed. When Jet entered our tiny living room, he closed the door behind him.

  “This better be good.” He dusted snow from his jacket. “Pete just pulled out the whiskey.”

  I gave an exasperated sigh. “It is.”

  “Well?” Di crossed her arms and tapped her foot. Her eyes practically gleamed.

  I pulled the papers from my pocket. “Look.”

  Holding them out, I let everyone see what was on them. Drawn in intricate detail were all of the symbols tattooed on our wrists.

  The symbols of the solar system.

  DI SNATCHED THE papers from my hands. “Where did you get these?”

  I eyed Amber. “Do you want to explain or should I?”

  “I will.” Amber held her head higher. “Let’s all sit.”

  Everyone pulled the chairs and couches into our familiar circle and then Amber launched into a tale. She told the story of how we’d been searching for cattle. About how we’d broken away from the group and then wandered into the Forbidden Hills because she had a feeling something was in there. I rolled my eyes at her exaggerations while Jet and Jasper’s mouths actually dropped. Amber remained oblivious. I wondered if she knew about the reputation those hills had. Probably not.

  When she got to the part about the cabin, everyone grew silent.

  “So you found these papers in that cabin?” Di finally said. She held them in her hands and studied them closer. An aggrieved expression settled on her face. “I don’t understand. What does it mean? That whoever owns that cabin knows about us?”

  “Maybe,” I replied.

  She passed the papers around so everyone could see them better. Each sheet held a hand drawn picture of a planet from our solar system. Someone had painstakingly etched each one in pencil, along with a detailed description about what the planet consisted of. It was all done in tiny, precise writing. The amount of information was staggering. The planet’s description was written in a neat column beside the picture. It included the planet’s size, mass, atmosphere, what its core was made of, its distance from the sun, its revolution and rotation time, and other tidbits that were unique to each celestial body.

  But it wasn’t the writing or pictures that caused everyone’s eyes to widen. It was the symbols drawn in the middle of each planet. The symbols tattooed on our inner wrists. Jacinda’s face whitened when she saw her tattoo in the middle of Uranus.

  “So these are planetary symbols?” she finally said.

  Flint nodded. “Di and I knew that. This isn’t new information, but the fact that whoever lives in that cabin had these drawings is suspicious. Definitely suspicious.”

  Jacinda clasped her hands tightly together.

  Di’s brow furrowed and a sound of frustration emitted from her throat. “I didn’t see any of this coming. Why is that?”

  Mica shrugged. “You can’t see everything.”

  Di still didn’t look happy. She leafed through all of the papers again. “My symbol is Venus.”

  “And I’m Mars,” said Flint.

  “Earth,” I chipped in.

  “Mica’s Neptune, Amber’s Mercury, and Jacinda’s Uranus,” Di said.

  “And we’re Jupiter and Saturn,” Jasper commented, nudging his brother.

  “So what does this mean?” Di set the papers in her lap.

  “That we’re aliens from these planets?” Jet said.

  I almost slugged him in the shoulder. “Serious answers only please.”

  “But we could be.” Jet’s eyes gleamed. “I mean think about it. We could have—”

  “No.” Di held up her hand. “Just read the descriptions on these planets. No humans can inhabit these places. And we’re all human.”

  “But do we actually know that?” Jet said.

  Di sighed. “Yes.”

  “What this could mean, is that the cabin you found is part of our pasts,” Flint said. “Either that or the owner has an obsessive interest in astronomy.”

  I thought about Flint’s and my backyard astronomy hobby. I then thought about the bedrooms with the three beds in one and five in the other, and the animal drawings and f
ashion magazines.

  “I’d bet money that cabin is part of our pasts.” I frowned, thinking about the room in the basement. I still hadn’t told anyone about it. I wasn’t sure I liked that room being a part of anyone’s past.

  “There’s more,” I said.

  Di stood and put her hands on her hips. “There is?”

  “There was this room, in the basement.” I paused. “It was . . . unusual.”

  Amber eyed me, her gaze questioning.

  “What kind of room?” Di asked.

  “I’m not sure exactly. It looked like a laboratory.”

  “Seriously?” Jet said.

  “Seriously,” I replied.

  “We should go back,” Mica said. “And check it out.”

  “Yes, we should go back,” Di agreed, “but will we be able to find it? The Forbidden Hills are notorious for people getting disoriented in—right?”

  Amber’s eyes lit up. “I can find it. The cabin had a unique smell. I think I can track it.” The twins grinned. Mica actually cheered.

  “Wait,” I said as everyone’s excitement grew. “Someone lives there.”

  “What?” Di spun toward me. “Someone lives there?”

  I described the cereal bowl. “Someone has been there recently. At least in the last day or two.”

  Di pursed her lips and paced a few times. “Why would someone live there?” She tapped a finger to her mouth. “I didn’t think anybody lived in the Forbidden Hills.”

  “Well, if you’re our alien master you might,” Jet said.

  “Here we go again,” Mica muttered.

  “Do you think whoever was there knows us?” Amber asked.

  “It’s possible,” Di said.

  “So when do we go back?” Jasper asked.

  Di paced again. She stopped and put her hands on her hips. “Right after supper. Since Pete and Val are expecting us back, we need to have dinner with them. If we don’t, they’ll look for us. We don’t want to risk anyone following us.”

  “Let’s head back to the main house now,” Flint said. “We’ll tell everyone goodnight after we eat, say that we’re tired and turning in. With the blizzard, nobody’s going to be out. They won’t know we’re gone.”

  Di nodded tightly. “Let’s go.”

  Everyone stood to leave. In a hurry, Di bumped into Jasper. The bump made her lose hold of the papers. They fluttered to the floor. “Damn,” she murmured.

  She reached down to collect them. They lay scattered in a half circle. I stared at the symbols. My eyes widened. I scanned them again and stopped her from picking them up.

  “Wait! Just hold on a minute.” My eyes darted back and forth across the symbols. A second ticked by. Then another. I raced into my bedroom.

  The room was a mess. Between Mica, Amber and I, clothes were everywhere. “Dammit!” I reached down and fumbled through everything. My backpack had to be in here somewhere.

  Flint appeared at my side. “What are you looking for?”

  “My backpack.”

  I didn’t need to say anything else. He whipped into action. A blurred second later, my backpack was in my hands.

  “Thank you.”

  He just nodded. “What did you think of?”

  I unzipped the bag and pulled out my map. I fingered the rough paper. I’d never actually used it. In fact, I’d never even opened it, since, in the end, the instinct had led me entirely on its own. I’d bought it nonetheless before leaving Rapid City, just in case.

  “Follow me,” I replied.

  We joined everyone back in the living room. I unfolded the map on the floor and stared at it. “Has anyone thought about where we woke up?” I asked excitedly. “About the cities we woke up in?”

  Di rolled her eyes. “Of course. Flint and I have looked at them from every angle. What states they were in, the names of the cities, how they were spelled, if they had similar histories, population sizes, demographics. Everything. But we couldn’t find a connection.”

  “Yeah, but did anyone look at them on a map?” I asked.

  Di glanced at Flint. He hunkered down at my side.

  “No,” Di said grimly.

  I flattened the map more. “Maybe there’s some kind of connection with where we woke up and these symbols.”

  Di kneeled at my side. Lines of highways, interstates and outlines of the forty-eight states lay before us. “Does anyone have a pen or something I can write with?” I asked.

  Flint rushed from the room and returned two seconds later with a ballpoint. I grasped the pen and scanned the map, circling the cities as I went. “Okay, Rapid City, South Dakota; Yellowstone National Park; Salt Lake City, Utah; Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; El Paso, Texas; Lubbock, Texas; Wichita, Kansas.”

  I studied the dots. Reaching down, I drew an imperfect circle, connecting all eight cities. I grinned.

  Jacinda leaned forward. She studied it for a few seconds. Her eyes widened. “It all goes in order.”

  Di frowned, assessing the cities again.

  Jacinda’s eyes glowed excitedly. “Lena woke up in Rapid City. You woke up in Wichita, Di. Amber woke in Lubbock, Mica in El Paso, me in Phoenix, Jet in Las Vegas, Jasper in Salt Lake and Flint in Yellowstone!” Her voice grew more animated with each second.

  “You see it too!” I cried.

  Di’s eyes widened. “Our tattoos! Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.”

  “They go in order with our cities and tattoos,” Flint stated.

  “Yes! My tattoo—the symbol for Earth is Rapid City. That’s just northeast of Yellowstone, where you woke up, Flint, and just northwest of Wichita, the city you woke in, Di. Venus, Earth, Mars—our three cities sit on the circle in correlation with our tattoos. Just the order they correlate with in our solar system.”

  “Yes!” Di studied the map. “It’s too uncanny to be a coincidence.”

  “They do almost fall in a perfect circle with each other.” Jasper eyed the map.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty close,” Jet agreed.

  “It’s too much of a coincidence,” Di stated. “These have to be clues.”

  “And at the center of it all, is exactly where we are.” I pointed at the center of the circle. It was near Little Raven.

  “Which is probably why we were drawn here,” Flint murmured.

  “But we haven’t found anything,” Jacinda said. “If we are where we’re supposed to be, how come we don’t know anything?”

  “Because we’re not exactly where we’re supposed to be, just close to it,” I replied.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Flint’s energy grew. A steady push pulsed into me.

  I nodded. “It’s not just Little Raven and this ranch that are near the center of the circle. That cabin is too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  We hurried through supper. I’m sure everyone noticed our strained conversations and inhaled eating. Luckily, since the Henderson daughters and their families were here, Pete and Val had others to capture their attention. The cowboys, however, all eyed us curiously. Especially Dean. I avoided his questioning glances as the eight of us threw our coats back on and trudged out the door.

  Once back in our living room, Di wasted no time issuing orders. “Everyone get their warmest clothes on. We’ll also need flashlights and a crowbar. If whoever lives there isn’t back, I’m breaking into that lab.”

  We all flew into action.

  I eyed Amber as she and I finished getting dressed in our room. A sliver of fear snaked through me.

  “Are you sure you can find it?” I asked. We walked out of the room to join everyone else. For a moment, Amber’s brow furrowed, and she bit her lip.

  “Do you know what will happen if you don’t find it and we get lost in the Forbidden Hills?” I hissed.

  Jacinda flashed us a worried look but pretended she hadn’t heard my questions.

  Amber jutted her chin out, a determined expression growing on her face. “I’ll find it.”
>
  IT WAS A cold, dark ride back into the hills. Bitingly frigid wind stung my face. Nothing but white flew around. The snow was already six inches deep which made for slippery footing. The horses didn’t seem fazed, but I gripped my legs tightly around Coal as we climbed the hills behind the barn.

  When we finally reached the Forbidden Hills, a dark mass of nothingness stood in front of us. My toes were mostly numb, and I was pretty sure my cheeks were red from the cold. I could practically feel Amber’s nervousness, but once again, she closed her eyes and slowly nudged her mare ahead.

  We followed her deeper and deeper into the trees. Moving in a single file line, we kept each horse nose to butt so we wouldn’t lose track of anyone. Every now and then, we did a count. Everyone had to state their name and where they were in the group so no one got lost.

  As I ducked my head at the last minute to avoid a tree branch, I figured that the chances of us losing each other were slim despite the dark night. With all of us together, our gifts made us quite formidable.

  After another solid hour of riding, maybe more, maybe less—it was hard to tell in this forest, the cabin appeared. It was like before. It was so well blended into the landscape and designed in such a way as to not draw attention that I would have walked right past it if Amber hadn’t stopped us.

  Dim moonlight filtered through the clouds. We all stopped and circled around. Everyone stared at the vacant windows. Mica jumped to the ground and ran to the porch. I, however, didn’t feel nearly as excited. The room in the basement flashed through my mind.

  In the night, with snow flying, there was just enough light to see the old, wooden siding which was painted to mimic leaves and trees. It was eerie and ominous looking, as though someone had a secret hidden deep within this place. A secret someone didn’t want anyone to find.

  I briefly wondered if whoever lived here had built this cabin or simply fixed it up. Perhaps this house had been around for a hundred years, but then I remembered the concrete foundation. It couldn’t be that old.

  “So, this is it.” Di’s voice was quiet, yet eager, and snapped me out of my reverie.

  We corralled the horses in the small barn. From there, Amber led us to the cabin door. Inside, Flint whipped around the house at lightning speed until every light was switched on.